Fireworks

I swear someone was shooting them off this morning at 7:15. Or maybe my brain was still trying to be asleep.

Anyway, last night wasn’t actually as bad as I was expecting. Partially because I was at the “children’s table” at dinner.

Process that for a minute. I’m 39. And I was at the “children’s table.” Seriously.

And no, that was not a comment on my maturity. Just on the number of people at the gathering even older than I am. Although I was disturbed to learn how many pop culture interests I have in common with my sixteen year old cousin.

One of those common interests sort of worries me about the younger generation in general, though. (Yes, I will get to the fireworks eventually, I promise.) Her current “obsession,” as her brother put it, is Final Fantasy VII. Which she has never played. Nor, from the sound of it, has she ever played the sequel/prequel games, nor seen Advent Children. So what, exactly, is she such a fan of? How is she so familiar with the plot? She knew the characters and the story pretty well already, and was excited that the game itself was now on Steam, so she could finally play it once she forced her (younger) brother to buy it. But…I just feel like there’s something wrong when you can be an eager fan of something you’ve never actually experienced in any way.

Is that just the result of the Internet age?

Oh well.

Okay, the fireworks.

So, the apartment where we were watching the fireworks was on the 23rd floor of an apartment building in an area where there aren’t that many buildings that get that tall, so there weren’t that many buildings to block the view, and it’s a huge apartment, taking up half the floor, so by going from one balcony to another, we could see in multiple directions. (Fortunately, the weather was amazingly cool, and it was actually nice standing out on the balconies, instead of the usual sticky heat at this time of year.)

There are a ludicrous number of small municipalities around here, and that really shows by the number of fireworks that were being set off last night. (Though admittedly some of them were also being illegally set off by people in their backyards (one practically right below us, in fact) and some of them would have been organizations like country clubs and such.) There had to have been at least fifty different fireworks displays we could see last night from that apartment, probably more. Now, we could probably see them from as many as ten miles away, but even so!

The main fireworks display we were there to see, the one for the whole county, was very impressive, but ugh…the smoke left behind…it was like a whole cloud formation. Eeew. And the smoke had been a problem earlier as well, from some of the other displays, having already aggravated my asthma once.

I had to wonder, though, seeing all those fireworks going off, what would aliens think, if they approached this planet on the fourth of July and saw all that? If they hadn’t intercepted any broadcast signals to understand what fireworks were, that is. Would they think we were making war on each other–or on them? What would all those fireworks look like from space or the upper atmosphere?